“Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived through the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon.
His enthusiasm will impress you. But it's his sense of organization that will increase the pleasure of revisiting those wonderful sessions from the late 40s and early 50s, by making the process clear and easy. We learn who was on each date, the repertoire, and a recommendation for listening to one prominent track from that session.
All of our heroes from those days are here, with reminders of the sypporting cast and relationships that we may have forgotten, or just never known. Besides the kicks we get from reading those details, this can also be thought of as a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.”
- Dave Grusin
“The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen...great stories of when, how, who, etc. I loved reading this book because I knew everyone you write about, but I didn't know how each record date went down. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.”
-Terry Gibbs
What a good idea - listen to your favorite records and then write about them!
But while it may sound like a simple and easy thing to do, it’s far more difficult than one would imagine because as Peter Keepnews has succinctly put it:
“Those of us who have tried writing about Jazz know what a daunting challenge it can be to do it well. Expressing an opinion about a given musician or recording is easy; explaining what exactly it is that makes that musician or recording worth caring about is not.”
But that’s exactly what Tad Richards has consistently managed to do in Listening to Prestige, Vol. 1 1949-1953; Listening to Prestige, Vol. 2, 1954-1956; Listening to Prestige, Vol. 3 1954-1956.
These volumes are must reading for any serious Jazz fan and a wonderful introduction to the Bop and Hard Bop years [circa 1945-1965] as captured on these iconic Prestige Recordings. Tad's annotations are fun to read and full of useful insights. A labor of love on behalf of the music and one to be treasured. And lest I forget, each of the volumes have loads of Tad originals drawings which are a treat in and of themselves.
Tad explains how and why he went about the work of developing “Listening to Prestige” with a different emphasis in each of his introductions to the three volumes and I thought it might be simpler to just represent these explanations below.
All three volumes are available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions as well as directly from Tad through his website.
Listening to Prestige, Vol. 1 1949-1953
Introduction
“Prestige Records started in 1949. Bob Weinstock — like Milt Gabler with Commodore Records — started out as a record store proprietor, his store next to the legendary Metropole Cafe [NYC]. Musicians took to stopping by there, and jamming, and Weinstock got the idea of paying them to record some sides.
The record business was undergoing a sea change in the 1940s. Before World War II, it had almost entirely been the province of a few major labels, largely because they controlled the technology—not so much recording, but actually making records. They controlled the pressing plants.
During World War II, record production was even tighter. One of the principal ingredients in making a 78 RPM record was shellac, and that was needed for the war effort. There was also the Petrillo [Musicians Union] strike [against the major labels] of 1942-44, which meant a cessation of recorded music, with particularly unfortunate consequences for jazz. The legendary Billy Eckstine big band, featuring Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, went largely unrecorded; so did the early years of bebop.
After the war, record pressing became more available, and independent record companies popped up all over. This was the real birth of rhythm and blues, with labels like Specialty, Chess and Atlantic; but it was a fertile period for bebop and other experimental jazz styles. The big labels had dominated swing, but now jazz was finding more of a niche audience. Charlie Parker recorded his classic sides for Savoy, which started as a jazz label but eventually became better known for rhythm and blues. Dial was Parker's other label: it kept its focus on modern jazz, but did not last very far into the 50s.
If the 40s were the burgeoning decade for rhythm and blues independent labels, the 50s saw an incredible flourishing of modern jazz. Foremost among the independent jazz labels were Blue Note and Prestige. Blue Note had actually started in 1939 as a traditional jazz label, but by the late 40s it had begun to become known for its bebop line.
Bob Weinstock was a 19-year-old with his first business venture, a record store specializing in traditional jazz, when one day Alfred Lion came by, handed him a stack of records, and said, "I have something new: Thelonious Monk."
Weinstock's life was changed that day. Not long after, he arranged his first recording session, with Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz, and Prestige Records was born.
My life was changed in 1957, when I turned on the radio in the middle of the night, looking for an all-night rhythm and blues station, and heard something new, or new to me: John Coltrane with the Red Garland trio. It was jazz, and it was thrilling. And it was, I discovered when I went out and bought it, on Prestige Records.
The history of Blue Note has been told in more than one book, but with all the jazz literature that's out there, there's very little about Prestige. So I decided to do something. But what? I'm not a scholar, and I'm not a critic, and I'm not a musicologist. I'm just a guy who listens to jazz. A fan. So I began a fan's notes. Thanks to a very complete Japanese website, I had access to the set lists and participating musicians for every recording session every booked by Bob Weinstock for Prestige, and again thanks to the internet, I could listen to almost all of them.
So that's what I set out to do. I would listen to every Prestige recording session, in order, and blog about it.
This is that blog. I didn't look ahead as I was blogging; I just took each session as it came. A fan's notes on one of the great labels in one of the great periods of jazz.
I recommend listening along with me on this journey through a particular slice of jazz. I've suggested one cut from each session, where there is a cut available on YouTube if at all possible. Where the artist designation has changed (Oscar Pettiford became more famous than Serge Chaloff, so
subsequent album repackagings, and the YouTube listing, are under his name) I've indicated that.
Most of the Prestige recordings can be found on YouTube or on one of the subscription streaming services (I use Spotify). Some are very difficult. Most are in print, either as downloads or CDs from Original Jazz Classics, the current Prestige reissue label. The ones that aren't can generally be found on vinyl from eBay. And I strongly recommend using this a springboard to start your own collection, on CD, vinyl or download.”
Listening to Prestige, Vol. 2, 1954-1956
Introduction
“The years 1954-56 saw modern jazz ascendant. John Lewis was commissioned to write scores for movies — not in America, but at least in France, and Miles Davis would follow a year later. Actual jazzmen would still have to wait a few years, but jazz-influenced composers like Elmer Bernstein wrote movie scores, including The Man with the Golden Arm, which had on screen performances by Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne, Pete Candoli and others.
For me, in writing and casually researching the blog entries that comprise this book, the regional jazz centers were fascinating, particularly Detroit, which sent an amazing array of jazz giants to New York over the course of the decade. St. Louis had Miles Davis and Chuck Berry, but it didn't have the kind of jazz subculture that nurtured talent. Miles came to New York young and roomed with Charlie Parker. His real artistic development came there. Kansas City, a jazz hotbed of a previous generation, had brought forth Parker at the end of its renaissance. But no other urban center compared to Detroit, though Chicago was impressive too. Detroit and Chicago both had a thriving manufacturing economy, a strong black working/middle class with disposable income, and, equally important, high schools with great music education programs.
The greatest loss to the world of jazz in this time period was, of course, Charlie Parker, dead at 35, in 1955, of a variety of complications all traceable back to addiction. Wardell Gray died just two months later, in Las Vegas, under suspicious circumstances that went uninvestigated by a racist police department. Other deaths during these years included Hot Lips Page and Papa Celestin in 1954, and James P. Johnson in 1955. Tommy Dorsey died in 1956, to be followed by his brother a year later, and so did Art Tatum, but the shocker of that year was the auto accident that claimed the lives of Clifford Brown and Richie Powell.
Prestige saw some of the greatest names in jazz pass through its doors in these years. Billy Taylor, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, King Pleasure, Quincy Jones, Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Elmo Hope were some of those. Most spectacularly, Miles Davis wrapped up his Prestige contract with three marathon recording sessions, providing Bob Weinstock with material for new releases over the next several years.
Prestige was growing. Bob Weinstock was still doing almost all the producing, but that was beginning to change. Teddy Charles produced several sessions. Ira Gitler and Don Schlitten did a few. And most importantly, in 1954 Rudy Van Gelder began producing nearly all of the Prestige sessions.
As older artists cycled out of Prestige, new ones came in. Artists making their label debuts included Kenny Burrell, Red Garland, Mai Waldron, Paul Chambers, Art Taylor, Jerome Richardson, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Dave Schildkraut, Lucky Thompson, Frank Foster, Charlie Rouse, Candido, Jon Eardley.J.R. Monterose, Gigi Gryce, Gil Melle, Hank Mobley, Bill Hardman, Barry Harris, Barbara Lea, Moondog, Elvin Jones, and, of course ...
John Coltrane.
Welcome to three remarkable years.
[As of this writing, all of my "Listen to One" choices are available on YouTube. Or ... buy the albums. Buy more jazz, listen to more jazz, support more live jazz.]”
Listening to Prestige, Vol. 3 1954-1956
Introduction
“For me, in the course of chronicling these two years in jazz, the revelation, the Saul-on-the-road-to-Tarsus moment, came as I was listening to the May 27, 1958 session with Shirley Scott. I wrote about it then, and continued to write about it way more than was probably necessary, with the zeal of a new convert, so I will try very hard to restrain myself from repeating it all here.
The short version: the critics were wrong, all of them, in the 1940s and early 1950s when they relegated the rhythm and blues of that era to a back shelf, and refused to recognize it as jazz. Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, who entered the Prestige family portrait near the end of this volume and would become so important as one decade gave way to another, made their first recording for King, a rhythm and blues label, in 1956, It was called Jazz with a Beat, and that's as good an alternate name as any for rhythm and blues.
That may be the big news in the jazz education of Tad Richards, but it's not the big news in the development of Prestige records over the years 1957-58. Certainly the main story for the label was the continued rapid development of John Coltrane into one of the most important new stars in the jazz firmament. Coltrane had nine sessions as a leader during this period, more as a sideman.
Mose Allison had one of the most auspicious debuts of the decade with Back Country Suite, and was in Hackensack four more times before the curtain rang down on 1958.
Midway through that second year, Shirley Scott and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis would bring their new sounds to Prestige, and they were our label's harbingers of a phenomenon that would mostly be associated with Blue Note, but which would sweep through the whole jazz world with an urgency, immediacy, and gut-level appeal: soul jazz.
Jazz was changing, and how could it not? Jazz was always about change.”
Although not all of us have Tad’s discipline in writing down our thoughts about what we are listening to, most Jazz fans are mentally annotating what they are hearing in recorded Jazz. It may be a thought about the lyrical beauty of a particular solo, or the striking effect a certain rhythm section or the sense of power generated by a big band, but we are all ongoing observers of the music as we are hearing it.
In a sense, what Tad is offering is akin to a listening party when a bunch of Jazz friends sit down together to check out a latest record or compact disc or music file and each offers his or her views of the music.
Another benefit of Tad’s “listening companion approach” is that I found myself hearing new stuff in old records, not only from Tad’s perspective, but also because I was listening to them more closely and discerning different nuances and features in the music. And, lest we forget, Jazz fans rarely agree on anything, or put another way, they love to argue about who is the greatest instrumentalist, of what is the best album by a certain artist, or what is the greatest Jazz solo ever recorded. There's plenty of grist for that mill in these books as Tad is not shy about offering an opinion or two about race issues that have plagued the music throughout its history, the unacknowledged and unappreciated role of of rhythm and blues on the stylistic development of the music, and other injustices, grievances and assorted other trials and tribulations that are near-and-dear to Mr. Richards heart, but I'll let you discover these on your own. Since Tad is doing all the "heavy-lifting" by researching writing and self-publishing all of this so, the very least we as readers can do is to accept these books as a forum for self-expression on things that matter to him about Jazz and its makers.
“Listening to Prestige” is a treat. Do yourself a favor an indulge in all three volumes. You won’t be disappointed.
“Sonny
Rollins first recorded for Bob Weinstock's new Prestige label in 1949, when he
was not yet 19 years old and at the very beginning of his professional career,
although he had already appeared on three recording sessions (one with JJ.
Johnson, and two with singer Babs Gonzales). Rollins went on to participate in
a total of eighteen sessions for Prestige between 1949 and 1956—formative years
in which the saxophonist would make some of his greatest strides as an
improviser.”
- Charles Blancq
One of the great things about the boxed
set Sonny Rollins- The Complete
Prestige Recordings is that a good portion of the sleeve notes are
authored by Bob Blumenthal.
So not only does the owner get a ton of
brilliant music from tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ earliest recordings, a purchase
of the set also brings the observations, comments and insights of a Jazz writer
who has been awarded Grammys for the excellence of his insert notes [In 1999 for Coltrane:
The Classic Quartet/Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings and 2000 for Miles
Davis and John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-61].
You can read more about Bob’s background and current activities at www.jazzinamerica.org/.
As was the case with our earlier posting
of Doug Ramsey’s brilliant insert notes to The Complete John Coltrane Prestige Recordings, the editorial
staff at JazzProfiles is very
grateful to Nick Phillips and his team at The Concord Music Group for granting
copyright permission to reprint Bob’s writings on these pages. Order
information regarding Sonny Rollins-
The Complete Prestige Recordings is available at www.concordmusicgroup.com/.
And, of course, our thanks go out to Bob
as well for his continuing generosity in allowing us to represent his work once
again on the blog.
Sonny Rollins – The
Prestige Years by BOB BLUMENTHAL
““Spontaneous". . ."A music of personal expression".
. ."Different every performance". . . "The sound of surprise." It's amazing how frequently catchphrases of
jazz are honored only in the breach, how often even ranking stars of the music
settle for reliable choices when navigating through the potential minefield of
the improvised solo. But when Sonny Rollins plays, the spontaneity, surprise,
and freshly-minted personal expression are always present, which is one reason
he has been cited more frequently than any of his peers as the greatest living
jazz improviser (and hence jazz musician) in the two decades since he emerged
from his last sabbatical.
Rollins has deserved the designation of model jazz artist for about
twice that long, as the music in this collection indicates. At the age of 25,
while he was still working primarily as a sideman, and had only recently
returned from an earlier absence, his achievement was already imposing enough
to justify the album title Saxophone Colossus. Few of those who
had heard his previous Prestige sessions considered the designation mere
record-company hyperbole. Rollins, who began as far more than just a promising
talent, had been growing by leaps and bounds into one of those rare artists who
define a musical epoch. His aggressive virtuosity, searing energy, caustic
humor, and boundless imagination were already well documented, and had
contributed to the evolved conception of jazz modernism known as "hard
bop." Rollins's music would continue to grow in later years, as would his
mystique; but by the time his Prestige contract expired at the end of 1956 he
was already an acknowledged giant.
Rollins earned his reputation through the music contained on the
present seven compact discs, which can be heard as Acts 1 and 2 in one of the
longest (and still-running) sagas in jazz history. As such collections go, it
is uncommonly comprehensive. While Rollins had made three prior visits to a
recording studio before his New Jazz/Prestige debut with trombonist J.J.
Johnson in 1949, and actually cut his most important session as a teenager
three months later (with Bud Powell on Blue Note), the early Fifties found the
tenor saxophonist establishing an exclusive base on Prestige. Over a period of
five years, from his first session with Miles Davis through his first 12-inch
LP tour de force Work Time, all of Rollins's commercial recording was done for
that label. While 1956 would also find him making important studio appearances
elsewhere—with Clifford Brown/Max Roach and the succeeding Roach quintet on
EmArcy, with Thelonious Monk on Riverside, and on the first of
his own Blue Note albums—he still turned out the bulk of his performances for
Prestige founder/producer Bob Weinstock.
Despite the music they were creating, these were not the best of
times for Rollins or his contemporaries. America had only begun to confront the
racism that permeated its society, jazz was still trying to make a case for
itself as an art form, and the scourge of heroin addiction among young jazz
players added another and often insurmountable obstacle to personal growth.
That Rollins could overcome these circumstances testifies to a strength of
character equal to the strength of his sound and conception. Even when
witnesses report that he was not in the best of physical shape during one or
another of his early sessions, Rollins always provided at least some
intimations of brilliance. His rich and bellicose tone, the bold way in which
he extended and often anticipated a tune's underlying harmonies, his emphatic
swing and frequently abstract counter-rhythms, and the astounding continuity he
was able to generate with such diverse techniques made Rollins an influence
before he had pulled himself together. This is the erratic but invaluable
Rollins heard on the first half of this collection. After he had dealt with his
personal problems and emerged as a featured sideman with the Brown/Roach
quintet at the end of 1955, he was unstoppable.
Rollins enjoyed the luxury of working almost exclusively with jazz
giants during his Prestige years — although few of them were as yet recognized
as such. A quick glance at the collective personnel of this package indicates
the wealth of talent involved, and also that the evolution of an entire musical
style is documented here. With Brown, Davis, Kenny Dorham, or Art Farmer on
trumpet; John Lewis, Monk, and Horace Silver among the pianists; a roll of
drummers including Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones,
Roach, and Art Taylor; and appearances by fellow saxophonists John Coltrane,
Jackie McLean, and Charlie Parker, Rollins's Prestige recordings serve as a
mini-history of hard bop. This more percussive and blues-centered wing of jazz
modernism, which soon came to be known as East Coast style (to differentiate it
from the less assertive West Coast variety), made its first appearance on early
Miles Davis sessions recorded for Prestige and Blue Note. Certainly Blakey's
drumming on the October 1951 Davis date in this collection, and Philly Joe's
work on the trumpeter's subsequent January 1953 recordings, are prototypes of
hard bop accompaniment, just as the Rollins solos they support helped to define
the hard bop approach to the tenor.
These performances document as well the technological and marketing
changes in record formats that strongly influenced the music's evolution. The
very first sessions were produced for release as 78-rpm singles, yet as early
as the late-1951 Davis date the possibility
for extended performance offered by the 33-rpm, 10-inch
"long-playing" album was being explored. By 1955, the 10-inch discs
were already obsolescent, being replaced by 12-inch albums, which contained far
more playing time. It was a new era for recorded jazz, and Rollins was one of
the era's prophets.
Sonny was well positioned to reach such early eminence, for he grew
up in one of the richest environments a young jazz musician could imagine.
Theodore Walter Rollins was born in New York City on September 7, 1930; some references have listed the year as 1929
because he had once claimed to be a year older in order to obtain working
papers. The Rollins family first lived in an apartment in the heart of Harlem, on 137th Street between Lenox and
Seventh Avenues. The Savoy Ballroom was right around the corner, and the Cotton
Club was nearby. "I used to walk by both [places] as a kid," he once
recalled, "wishing I could go inside. You didn't have to be grown up to go
to the Apollo, though, so I went down there at least once a week and caught
practically everybody—Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Count
Basie .... We used to see those guys do a stage show, and then there'd be a
movie. Boy, those were the days; go get some candy, see maybe a murder mystery.
You'd hear the bands warming up in the background, and then you'd actually see
them. You caught a great show."
The movies, and the popular music heard on the radio, also made an
impression on the young Rollins, and explain his ongoing fondness for both the
staples and the obscurities of Tin Pan Alley. "I'm attracted to the older
standards because I listened to them growing up. I remember a lot of them, and
was influenced by Hollywood songs, songs from pictures. A lot of these
songs I can still relate to," he has said. His family also played a role
in shaping his tastes. "My playing calypso is mainly due to my mother
coming from the Virgin Islands. I went with her to a lot of calypso
dances, and heard many of the songs I play at a fairly early age."
By the time Rollins was 10, his interest in music had been focused:
"What made me want to be a musician was seeing a saxophone in a case. It
was so beautiful and shiny, I fell in love with the instrument." His
fondness for Louis Jordan led Rollins to begin on an alto sax. When his family
moved further uptown in the early Forties, to Harlem's Sugar Hill section,
the youngster's enthusiasm grew into passion. The new neighborhood was full of
established musicians, including his early idol Coleman Hawkins, as well as
such like-minded youngsters as Jackie McLean, Art Taylor, and Kenny Drew. The
teenage friends would often play together in pickup bands. "For some
reason, I was always the leader," Rollins recalls, "although Kenny
was the most schooled in terms of classical training.
"We were thoroughly dedicated to playing all through
school," Rollins continues. "And as we got older, we got to hang out
with a lot of the musicians. I got all kinds of things from a lot of people—the
meticulous shine on Buddy Tate's shoes when he came out front to solo with
Basic was something that registered. We'd also go down to 52nd Street and try to get into
the clubs. We'd put eyebrow pencil around our lips and wear big hats pulled
over our faces so no one would see how young we were. Charlie Parker was down
there, and we pestered Bird a lot, but he was always very nice.
"I first heard Parker when I was 15, on his record 'Ko-Ko.' I
was attracted to
him, but wasn't with him completely. At the time there was a rumor
that Bird was dead, then Savoy put out 'Now's the
Time' and 'Billie's Bounce' and that was all you would hear in Harlem. I began to get the
message. At the same time, I was a devotee of Coleman Hawkins—I had an alto,
but wanted a tenor so I could be like Coleman. I got my first tenor in 1946, so
these influences were intertwined. A few years later, guys in Chicago called me 'the Bird of
the tenor.'"
Rollins also acknowledges hearing a lot of other players in this
formative period. "There was this older guy in the neighborhood who knew I
played sax and asked me, 'Who's the greatest tenor man in the world?' I said
Coleman Hawkins, but he said 'No, Lester Young.' So I went out and got my first
Lester Young record, 'Afternoon of a Basie-ite,' and started paying attention
to Lester. Of course, I also loved Don Byas, Ben Webster, and Georgie Auld.... All
of the great tenor players made an impression."
The teenaged Rollins lacked confidence in his playing, and
seriously considered pursuing his talents in the visual arts by becoming a
cartoonist or painter until he received critical encouragement from several of
the period's innovators, including two who would employ the young tenor man on
their own Prestige recordings. He met Monk through Lowell Lewis, a trumpet-playing
friend and classmate who led a high-school combo with Rollins.
"Lowell and I lived up on the Hill, but went to high school on
116th Street on the East Side. This was the
beginning of New York City's efforts to
desegregate the schools, so we were sent to BenjaminFranklinHigh School in an Italian
neighborhood, and the situation was tense. Frank Sinatra came to sing at the
school after one of the incidents. He was a big star, and an Italian-American,
and it made an impression to have him come to a school in an Italian
neighborhood and tell the students to settle down. Nat Cole's trio came to the
school and played as well around this time." A decade later, Rollins would
remember Sinatra's visit when selecting "The House I Live In" (which
had been closely associated with the singer) for one of his final Prestige
sessions.
"After school, Lewis would go down to Monk's apartment for
rehearsals, and he'd bring me along. Monk was using another young tenor player
in his band at the time, and Lowell was convinced that I
was a better horn player. I learned a lot rehearsing with Monk, trying to learn
that music." Indeed, the complex rhythms and harmonies, daring use of
space, and idiosyncratic humor that became trademarks of the Rollins style can
be traced back to Monk, and can already be heard in embryonic form in his first
recorded solos, cut with Babs Gonzalez for Capitol in January and April of
1949, when Rollins was 18.
It was at about this time that he was first heard by Davis. "I used to play
in the jam sessions at Minton's. There was a promoter who heard me there who
ran Sunday afternoon sessions at the 845 Club in the Bronx. He would get people
like Miles, Bud Powell, Dexter Gordon, and J.J. to be the featured attractions,
then hire younger guys to play intermission. Miles first met me on one of those
Sunday sessions, where I was playing with my trio. [Rollins was already working
in the tenor-bass-drums format that he would popularize in the late Fifties.]
He invited me to work with his band, and those were some of the most memorable
playing experiences I had. Miles was an idol of mine, and we seemed to have a
lot in common; our styles blended. Encouragement from Miles, Monk, Bud Powell,
and Art Blakey finally convinced me not to be so self-deprecating and to try to
make it."
The musical odyssey charted in this collection begins with an
example of Rollins from this period, his early 1949 session with the sextet
known as Jay Jay [sic] Johnson's Boppers. It was the tenorman's fourth visit to
a recording studio, and his second with Johnson, who had used him two weeks
earlier on a quintet date for Savoy that included Rollins's first two recorded
compositions. The Prestige debut contains another early Rollins original, the
bop blues "Hilo," and
coincidentally includes three-fifths of a future Max Roach quintet, Roach,
Sonny, and Kenny Dorham. About the brass giants on hand here, Rollins says:
"I knew Kenny from when he moved up on the Hill. We were tight, and used
to practice and rehearse together. J.J. had been on my first record date with
Babs Gonzalez, but I may have met him earlier at a session."
By 1951 and his first session with Davis, Rollins had begun
paying the dues that were all too common during the period. After leaving New York for Chicago to work briefly with
the respected but unrecorded drummer Ike Day in late 1949, he was incarcerated
for eight months on a drug-related charge in 1950. Rollins was even more
intense and rambunctious after his release from prison, and his work with Davis reveals that he was a
perfect contrast to the more pensive trumpeter. "Miles always needed a
strong, aggressive sax player to play off his style," Rollins notes. Davis was so enthusiastic
that he persuaded Weinstock to tape a track featuring Rollins at the end of the
session, and, since John Lewis had already left the studio, provided the piano
accompaniment. These themeless choruses on the chords of Parker's
"Confirmation," ultimately titled "I Know" when released as
a 78-rpm single, apparently led the Prestige executive to give the young
saxophonist a recording contract.
Another studio appearance with Davis preceded the first
official Rollins session in December 1951. While these dates include several
intimations that the young tenor player was already something special (how many
musicians would have quoted "Well, You Needn't" then, as he does
during his chorus on "Out of the Blue"?), Rollins was scuffling at
the time, a situation indicated by his reported use of a coat hanger and a
length of rope in place of a neck strap on his first session.
"Drugs passed through like a tornado in the early
Fifties," he has recalled in frank evaluation. "Guys came back from Korea smoking heroin. It was
plentiful, and I was hooked pretty bad, along with everybody else. It was a
thing we all went through; some of us came out of it, and some didn't. I
did."
The battle was not easily won. He was arrested again in 1952 for
parole violation. Out once again and back on the scene in January 1953, Rollins
made his third studio appearance with Davis in a sextet that also
included Charlie Parker on tenor. This summit meeting proved to be a
tension-filled affair that went unreleased until 1956, after Parker's death.
Rollins sounds like the most together of the soloists through much of the date,
although his actual condition led to a pivotal conversation with Parker.
"I'm sure Bird thought it was because of him that I was using
heroin," Rollins recalls, "and he asked me at the session if I was
straight, because he knew I was on parole at the time. I had just messed around
with another musician before the session, but I lied and told Bird I was
straight. At a break, somebody else mentioned that I had gotten high. That's
when Bird told me I could be a great musician if I didn't mess around, and that
stayed on my mind. He couldn't get off of it, and when he saw all of these
young kids hooked, he took it on himself. This motivated me—I wanted to show
him that one of his followers got the message. The sad thing was that Bird died
while I was in Lexington the second time, so I
never got to tell him." His respect for Parker was clear enough at the
time, despite suggestions to the contrary after he quoted "Anything You
Can Do, I Can Do Better" on both takes of "The Serpent's Tooth."
"Miles and I both liked to play that song. The quote really had no
particular significance, although I thought later about how it could be taken
the wrong way."
Rollins continued to grow as a musical force during 1953 and '54
despite two more years of personal turmoil. His October 1953 recordings with
the Modern Jazz Quartet reveal a more mature soloist and composer. A month
later, he cut his first session with Monk. More of the rough edges had been
planed away on a January 1954 date with Art Farmer, who had approached Rollins
about recording after the two had played together at sessions. Among its other
features, the Farmer session included the Horace Silver/Percy Heath/Kenny
Clarke rhythm section that would go on to make three important sessions for
Miles Davis later in 1954. The last of these was the June 29th date on which
Rollins came into his own.
Not only was the saxophonist playing on an elevated level on this
most famous of his five Prestige sessions with Davis, but the presence of
"Airegin," "Oleo," and "Doxy" made Rollins the composer
a force to be reckoned with as well. The trumpeter was already an acknowledged
star maker at the time, and his inclusion of a sideman's tunes on his
recordings was the ultimate seal of approval. "Those tunes had all been
written prior to the date," Sonny recalls, "some of them while I was
incarcerated. I don't recall playing them on jobs with Miles, though; it was
probably a situation where we were in the studio and Miles said 'Got any
tunes?'" The arrangements of "Oleo" and "Airegin,"
which build tension by having pianist Silver lay out for extended stretches,
were also highly influential. Rollins, like many later Davis sidemen, cannot recall
if this idea was his own or the trumpeter's. "I'll give Miles the benefit
of the doubt, since it was his date, but I don't really know who had the idea. When I played with Miles during this period, the piano would often
inhibit what we wanted to do, and both of us would ask the pianist to stroll.
We had a lot of similar ideas about music."
Musicians and fans were starting to pay attention to Rollins, and
Prestige responded in the latter half of 1954 with two 10-inch albums under the
saxophonist's name. As commanding as he sounds on Sonny Rollins Quintet (with
Dorham and Elmo Hope) and Sonny Rollins (the quartet encounter with Monk), he
was still wrestling with his drug habit. By year's end he had checked himself
into the federal drug facility in Lexington, Kentucky, motivated by Parker's
earlier advice to cure himself once and for all. After four and a half months
in Lexington, Rollins returned to Chicago, where he felt that he
had experienced important musical growth four years earlier. He took a room at
the YMCA, found work as a janitor and as a laborer loading trucks, and used his
spare time to practice.
Months passed before he began playing in public. "Then it
started," he has recalled, "the real test. Guys coming up to you at
sessions and offering you stuff, and your palms sweating; you've seen it in the
movies. There I was struggling, working my little day job, and right around the
corner from the YMCA where I was living was a record store with my quartet
album with Monk in the window! It was tough, but I came through that
okay." His practice time was spent "just working on things. I had my
loose-leaf notebook—I still have that notebook, in my apartment in New York—and it had various
individual things that I wanted to work on. I was always working on something,
and I was also learning songs. I remember rehearsing 'There's No Business Like
Show Business' in the basement of the T with Booker Little."
Rollins took the majority of 1955 to pull himself together. While
in Chicago, he turned down an offer to join the newly
formed Miles Davis quintet, which made a place for the then-unknown John
Coltrane. In November, he subbed for Harold Land when the Clifford Brown/Max
Roach quintet visited Chicago; some of their first
performances at the Beehive club were taped and released a quarter-century
later. When the quintet left town, Rollins was on board as a full-time member,
creating one of the most inspired (and sadly short-lived) front-line pairings
in jazz history. Act 1 of the Rollins saga had concluded; and Work Time, recorded in New York shortly after he had
joined Brown/Roach, brings up the curtain on Act 2.
In little more than a year, Rollins would record six sessions under
his own name for Prestige, as well as a final studio appearance under Davis's leadership. This is
a truly prodigious output, particularly for an artist who takes so much time to
prepare his contemporary releases. "All recording is a traumatic
experience for me," Rollins once told Orrin Keepnews; but it was an
experience he was more readily willing to undergo after his return from Lexington and Chicago. The demand for
product in the dawn of the era of the 12-inch album may explain in part this
burst of activity, although the determination of Prestige to stockpile material
before Rollins's contract expired may have also played a role. From Rollins's
own perspective, he recalls simply wanting to work and make some money after
his period of struggle. Whatever the reason, Rollins approached these albums
with a mixture of furious energy and intellectual rigor that announced a new
creative plateau. Viewed as a group, they form an intriguing pyramid, with the
first and last being the most hard-driving and confrontational, the second and
fifth capturing Rollins at the head of bands where he appeared nightly as a
sideman, and the middle masterpieces Tenor Madness and Saxophone Colossus revealing more
subtlety and an even greater range of expression.
Work Time, from December '55,
and Tour
de Force, made almost exactly one year later, are the most heated of
the efforts. The former has often been identified as one of Rollins's greatest
achievements, while the latter features starkly contrasting moods, given the
two ballads with Earl Coleman. ("Earl's recordings with Parker put him in
an exalted place, in my view. Since Bird did a record with Earl, I wanted to do
one too.") What earned the latter album its title, though, were the
themeless dashes through the chord changes of "Lover" ("B.
Swift") and "Cherokee" ("B. Quick"), as well as the
voracious invention of the blues "Ee-ah." "Max and I did want to
see how fast we could play," Rollins admits about this last session.
"I was young and strong, and able to at least try anything."
Sonny
Rollins Plus 4 and Rollins Plays for Bird
found the saxophonist fronting the Brown/Roach and Roach quintets,
respectively. In each instance, Rollins chose material that was not a part of
the regular group repertoire. "I wrote 'Valse Hot' on the road, right
after I joined the band, but never performed it in person until after the album
came out. The rest of the material was just current pop tunes that I liked or,
in the case of the Bird medley, songs that Max and I associated with Parker. I
was interested in writing a waltz; the precedent was Fats Waller's 'Jitterbug
Waltz,' that was in my mind, and I used the chords from 'Over the Rainbow.'
Tent-Up House' was not based on another tune. The title comes from my situation
when I wrote it. I was staying in someone's house at the time, and felt pent up
because I couldn't practice."
The session with Clifford Brown is one of only two studio
encounters between the trumpet giant and Rollins, who had taken part in a
Brown/Roach session for EmArcy earlier in the year. It is one of the few albums
of his own that the perpetually self-critical Rollins admits to liking. "I
like the different moods I got with Clifford on that session. We really sound
compatible." He will also express fondness for "The House I Live
In" from the Plays for Bird session, although Prestige did not release the
track with the other material recorded at the date. "I was never consulted
about what would and would not get released," Rollins explains. This
track, as well as "Sonny Boy" from the final session, only surfaced
in the early Sixties after Rollins mentioned them in a conversation with critic
Joe Goldberg, whose subsequent reminder to Weinstock led to their rediscovery.
The Tenor Madness album features Rollins with the Davis band of the time minus
its leader, an inspired pairing of undetermined origin. "I'm not sure
whose idea it was, to be honest, mine or the record company's. At that time,
everybody was hanging out together, and you'd see each other all the time.
Groups would be put together for albums without a lot of premeditation. It was
a much smaller, tighter world." Whatever the source, the empathy of Red
Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones inspired Rollins to some of his
most relaxed and lyrical- work, before John Coltrane was added for an extended
performance on a line that Kenny Clarke had recorded ten years earlier under
the name "Royal Roost." "I have to plead innocent for taking a
composer's credit on 'Tenor Madness,'" Rollins emphasizes. "A lot of
record companies wanted to claim publishing rights at the time, and would put
your name on a piece and publish it through their company. . . .The same thing
happened with 'St. Thomas,' which of course is a
traditional song that I heard my mother singing."
"Tenor Madness" presents the only recorded opportunity to
hear Rollins and his good friend John Coltrane together, and it points up one
significant difference in their outlook: Coltrane was relentlessly serious, to
the point of humorlessness, while Rollins had a profound wit that ranged from
whimsical innuendo to broad musical pratfalls. One particular exchange
epitomizes the distinction so clearly that I have frequently played it for
friends who want to hear the difference between the two giants. It takes place
during the last four bars of the third chorus of "fours," and the
first four bars of the next chorus. Coltrane grows increasingly heated in his
turn, laboring over a pet ascending figure; then Rollins responds by juggling
the lick and ultimately playing it backwards. "Humor in music is a very
subjective thing," Rollins has said. "I feel whether a person has
humor should be a natural thing. Because of the humor in my music, people have
accused me of not really playing, of just playing around. In fact John told me
that about 'Tenor Madness'; he said, 'Aw, man, you were just playing with
me.'"
The consensus masterpiece of the Prestige years is Saxophone
Colossus, recorded a month after Tenor Madness. Rollins describes it
as "very clean for me—I'm a rough player usually," and has admitted
that "it caught everybody on a good day." It has the first great
Rollins calypso, "St. Thomas"; and another
unique original composition, "Strode Rode." ("I might have written
that one in Chicago. It was named for a
legendary place there called the Strode Hotel, which is where Freddie Webster
[an influential but little-recorded trumpet star of the Forties] died. I never
even saw the Strode Hotel when I was in Chicago, but I wanted to
dedicate something to Freddie Webster.") And it includes the most
celebrated performance of Rollins's career, "Blue 7." Several essays
have been written about this performance, most notably by Gunther Schuller in The Jazz Review. "I didn't really
understand what I was doing until I read Gunther Schuller," Rollins would
remark later.
"It's really funny. I didn't know what I was doing. This thing
about the thematic approach, I guess it's true, but I had never thought about
it; I was just playing it. But I guess it could be analyzed and you could find
some sort of theme developing all the way through, which is nice."
Rollins would continue on his way, leaving the analysis to others
while he blazed new paths. The Tour de Force session was his last for
Prestige. Another two-year cycle of intense recording followed, with the
saxophonist preferring to spread his masterpieces among the Blue Note,
Contemporary, and Riverside labels rather than
signing another exclusive contract. Keepnews, his Riverside producer (and the
producer of this collection), sees this as a first attempt to take control of
his own career, rather than be at the mercy of contractual demands. Rollins
would push the boundaries of what had quickly become hard bop convention
further in this period with his use of various piano less rhythm sections, and
with his first totally unaccompanied performances. Then, in 1959, he abruptly
retired, and was out of sight until a critic came upon him practicing on the WilliamsburgBridge two years later. Upon
his return in 1962, he was criticized from one direction for not radically
altering his style, then put down from the opposite quarter when he reorganized
his band to include former Ornette Coleman sidemen. After a few years he
dropped out again, this time to find spiritual fulfillment in Japan and India.
Rollins has been a more constant presence since his return to
active playing in 1972, and his performances of the past 20 years have received
numerous accolades. His recent working bands cannot compare, however, with the
units regularly assembled in the studios for Prestige; and too many of the
standards and originals that served him so well on his early recordings now go
unplayed. "Actually," he reports, "I still play most of the tunes
from Saxophone
Colossus, including 'Moritat,' when I'm in Japan, because that was the
best-selling jazz saxophone album of all time in Japan, and the fans still
want to hear it. And I do hope to play with some of my old friends again. Tommy
Flanagan was on a recent album, Falling in Love with Jazz [Milestone
9179]- I'd like to play with Max again, too. We were going to do something, but
had problems with the proposed venue. But I would like to play with Max and
some of the others, while we're all still around."
One can only hope that such encounters come to pass, and lament
that similar reunions did not occur while Blakey, Davis, Monk, and the other
departed giants who assisted in the coming of age of Sonny Rollins were still
among us. They are all present here on this audio Bildungsroman [generally, something such as a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual
education],
this document of one musical pilgrim's progress from promise to lasting
mastery.”
As you would imagine, it was almost impossible to select an audio track from the bounty of riches that is the boxed collection Sonny Rollins-The Prestige Years, but in the end we had to go with Sonny's Pent-Up House because it features Brownie on trumpet along with Richie Powell on piano, George Morrow on bass and Max Roach on drums.
